Wednesday, October 10, 2012

80's Party 2

The 1980s, also
known as "the Nineteen Eighties" or abbreviated as "The
Eighties" or "the '80s", was a decade that began on January 1,
1980 and ended on December 31, 1989. This was the ninth decade of the 20th
century.

The time period
saw great social, economic, and general change as wealth and production
migrated to newly industrializing economies. As economic liberalization
increased in the developed world, multiple multinational corporations
associated with the manufacturing industry relocated into Thailand, Mexico,
South Korea, Taiwan, and China. Japan and West Germany are the most notable
developed countries that continued to enjoy rapid economic growth during the
decade while other developed nations, particularly the United Kingdom and the
United States, re-adopted laissez-faire economic policies.

Developing
countries across the world faced economic and social difficulties as they
suffered from multiple debt crises in the 1980s, requiring many of these
countries to apply for financial assistance from the International Monetary
Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Ethiopia witnessed widespread famine in the
mid-1980s during the corrupt rule of Mengistu Haile Mariam, resulting in the
country having to depend on foreign aid to provide food to its population and
worldwide efforts to address and raise money to help Ethiopians, such as the
famous Live Aid concert in 1985.

The fall of the
Berlin Wall

The reforms in
the Soviet Union also had its effects on the other communist countries,
especially in Poland and Hungary. On August 23, 1989 Hungary opened the iron
curtain to Austria. Months before East German tourists used their chance to
escape to Austria from Hungary and in
September 1989 more than 13 000 East German escaped via Hungary within three
days. It was the first mass exodus of East Germans after the erection of the
Berlin Wall in 1961. Mass demonstrations against the government and the system
in East Germany begun at the end of September and took until November 1989.
Erich Honecker,
East Germany's head of state, had to resign on October 18, 1989.

The new
governement prepared a new law to lift the travel restrictions for East German
citizen.

At 06.53 pm on
November 9, 1989 a member of the new East German government, Günter Schabowski,
was asked at a press conference when the new East German travel law comes into
force. He answered: "Well, as far as I can see, ... straightaway,
immediately."

Thousands of East
Berliners went to the border crossings.
At Bornholmer Strasse the people demanded to open the border and at 10.30 pm
the border was opened there. That moment meant
the end of the Berlin Wall.

The Wall in its
entirety was not torn down immediately. Starting that evening and in the days
and weeks that followed, people came to the wall with sledgehammers or
otherwise hammers and chisels to chip off souvenirs, demolishing lengthy parts
of it in the process and creating several unofficial border crossings. These
people were nicknamed "Mauerspechte" (wall woodpeckers).

Some 80s Fashion, Trends and Fads.

For some, the 80s were a great time. The
creation of MTV revolutionized fashion, the music industry and even how they
watched TV. For others, it was nothing but bad hair, worse clothing and music
that often had more to do with machines than talent.

The clothes worn in the 80s depicted people
who were trying to find themselves. They looked for ways to express their
creativity and individuality. Men wore heavy make up and grew long hair. Women
wore short hair and layers of clothing. Both sexes were looking for an
identity.

In the 1970s, the
silhouette of fashion tended to be characterized by close fitting clothes on
top with wider, looser clothes on the bottom. This trend completely reversed
itself in the early 1980s as both men and women began to wear looser shirts and
tight, close-fitting trousers.

In 1984, the
American tv series, Miami Vice gave the casual style of wearing t-shirts under
expensive suit jackets. Many young to middle aged men eagerly adopted the
“Miami Vice Look” with the inclusion of broad shoulder pads to jackets and the
unshaven “designer stubble” look, made famous by Don Johnson (left on the picture).

Men also started wearing Hawaiian shirts with
sports jackets and growing mustaches again thanks to Tom Selleck in the series
Magnum, P.I. Gucci loafers also became
fashionable as casual, but expensive, footwear after being seen worn by Tom
Selleck in a cologne advertisement.

Medium-length
hair was common for men, while the longer haircuts of the 1970s went out of
fashion. However, very long hair for men became fashionable in the late 1980s
due to the influence of Heavy Metal music.

Brand names
became increasingly important in this decade, making Ralph Lauren and Calvin
Klein household names, among others.

After the release
of her single "Like a Virgin" in late 1984, Madonna became a fashion
icon for many young women around the world who copied her "street
urchin" look with short skirts worn over leggings, brassieres worn as
outer clothing, untidy hair, crucifix jewellery, and fishnet gloves.

The 1983 movie Flashdance made ripped
sweatshirts popular. The television shows Dallas and, in particular, Dynasty
also had a similar impact, especially in the area of the increasingly oversized
shoulder pads.

In the United
Kingdom and Ireland, the New Romantic music and fashion movement exerted a
strong influence over the clothing worn by both males and females in the early
years of the decade.

80s fashion
styles for men often included such things as acid washed jeans, parachute
pants, Reebok high tops, Converse
hightops(chucks), Cotler pants, kamikaze shirts (These shirts allowed you to
zip off the sleeves to show off your arms) and jean jackets.

Members Only
Jacket

Chances are, if
you were into 80s fashion, you had a Members Only Jacket. These jackets were
very popular in the 80s. They were first introduced in 1981 and came in a
variety of colors. In the 80s, you either had a Members Only jacket or you were
a complete and total fashion outcast.

Members Only is a
brand of clothing that became popular in the 1980s with the Members Only
jacket. The brand was created in 1975 and introduced to American markets in
1979 by Europe Craft Imports (later acquired in 1987 by the Marcade Group,
which was renamed Aris Industries in 1993).

Advertising
Tagline: "When you put it on, something happens." This tagline was so great that it got co-opted in the early 1990s and
used by various condom makers.

Parachute pants

What are
parachute pants? Back in the early 1980s, parachute pants were tight, shiny
pants made of synthetic material--the stuff used to make parachutes. These
pants were originally created for break dancers who needed pants that could
stand up to the abuse of break dancing. They typically featured multiple
zippers to add to the edgy feel. While women sometimes wore parachute pants
during the 80s , they were most often worn by men.

Parachute pants
are a style of trousers characterised by the use of nylon, especially ripstop
nylon. In the original loose-fitting, extraneously zippered style of the late
70s/early 80s, "parachute" referred to the pants' synthetic nylon
material. In the later 80s, "parachute" may have referred to the
extreme bagginess of the pant. They are typically worn as menswear and are
often brightly colored. Parachute pants became a fad in US culture in the 1980s
as part of an increased cultural appropriation of breakdancing. Parachute pants
played a pivotal role in the 1980s in fashion.

Ray-Ban Wayfarer Sunglasses

Ray-Ban Wayfarers were by far the most
popular sunglasses worn in the 80s. Originally designed in the 1950s, the
Wayfarer had declined in popularity by the late 70s. That all changed in 1983
when Tom Cruise wore them for his break out movie role in the film Risky
Business. Demand for the glasses took off with hundreds of thousands being sold
immediately after the release of the movie. The glasses could be seen on many
of the top celebrities of the 80s, including Michael Jackson, Don Johnson, and
Madonna.

Baby On Board Signs

The little yellow sign that looked like a
yellow warning sign.

The
original signs were the brainchild of Michael Lerner, who created the Safety
1st company with the idea of marketing the signs to parents who were concerned
at the high level of car crashes in the US. And, no, the idea wasn't inspired
by an actual crash, as the ol' urban legend tells us. No, Lerner just happened
to see similar signs on a trip through Europe.

Maybe it
was just karma then that Lerner's 'invention' became such an object of so much
ridicule that the original effect was lost pretty quickly. Instead of drivers
giving space behind a car with a 'Baby on Board' sign, suddenly they were speeding
up to see if it was actually a joke sign, and if so, see what it said.

The
original signs, which had been all the rage in the fall and winter of 1984 were
suddenly 'signa-non-grata' less than two years later, replaced with gems like
'Mother-in-Law in Trunk', 'Alien on Board', and the awesome 'Nobody on Board'.

Boom Boxes

The "ghetto blaster." The
portable radio, with two speakers as a minimum, the heavier and the bigger, the
better.

The first Boombox was developed by the
inventor of the C-Cassette, Philips of the Netherlands. Their first 'Radiorecorder' was released in 1969. The Philips
innovation was the first time that radio broadcasts could be recorded onto
C-Cassette tapes without cables or microphones that previous stand-alone
cassette tape recorders needed. Early sound quality of tape recordings was poor
but as the C-Cassette technology evolved, with stereo recording, Chromium tapes
and noise reduction, soon HiFi quality devices become possible. Several
European electronics brands such as Grundig also introduced similar devices.

The desire for louder and heavier bass led
to bigger and heavier boxes; by mid-1980s some boomboxes had reached the size
of a suitcase, the bigger and
flashier the boombox the better; it became a status symbol among young
urbanites which in turn called for increasingly extravagant boxes.

Rubik Cube

The toy that was a real pain in the butt to
solve, unless you peeled the stickers or pulled it apart.

Rubik's Cube is a
3-D mechanical puzzle invented in 1974 by Hungarian sculptor and professor of
architecture Ernő Rubik. Originally called the "Magic Cube", the
puzzle was licensed by Rubik to be sold by Ideal Toy Corp. in 1980 via German
businessman Tibor Laczi and Seven Towns founder Tom Kremer, and won the German
Game of the Year special award for Best Puzzle that year.

In a classic
Rubik's Cube, each of the six faces is covered by nine stickers, each of one of
six solid colours (traditionally white, red, blue, orange, green, and yellow).
A pivot mechanism enables each face to turn independently, thus mixing up the
colours. For the puzzle to be solved, each face must be returned to consisting
of one colour. Similar puzzles have now been produced with various numbers of
stickers, not all of them by Rubik.

Although the
Rubik's Cube reached its height of mainstream popularity in the 1980s, many
speedcubers continue to practise it and other "twisty puzzles" and
compete for the fastest times. Its international governing body, the World Cube
Association, has organised competitions and kept the official world records
since 2003.

Trivial Pursuit

The game that made people start memorizing
useless crap in order to win. Probably one of the biggest crazes when it came
out though.

Trivial Pursuit is a board game in which
progress is determined by a player's ability to answer general knowledge and
popular culture questions. The game was created in 1979 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada,
by Canadian Chris Haney, a photo editor for Montreal's The
Gazette and Scott Abbott, a sports editor for The Canadian. After finding
pieces of their Scrabble game missing, they decided to create their own game. With
the help of John Haney and Ed Werner, they completed development of the game,
which was released in 1982.

In North
America, the game's popularity peaked in
1984, a year in which over 20 million games were sold.